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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Gear= Win in PVP, How are they going to Balance Group Comps?
Gardosien
Member, Alpha Two
Gear should matter, but should not be the main factor in a fight. If one group is naked and the other not OK, it should . But one group in Blues, One in Epic and Legos. The Blue group out Skill the lego players by 100%, that should give them a chance. Right now it does not.
Class kits are great! In AOC, make them matter as much as gear. 1-3 button I win from players lack PVP exp player, should not kill seasoned skilled players just because of gear tier. I. Gear should swing that fight vs = Skill Groups, but not Win the fight for players not using the right skills , when fighting in a group fighting or otherwise. BROKEN....
Class kits are great! In AOC, make them matter as much as gear. 1-3 button I win from players lack PVP exp player, should not kill seasoned skilled players just because of gear tier. I. Gear should swing that fight vs = Skill Groups, but not Win the fight for players not using the right skills , when fighting in a group fighting or otherwise. BROKEN....
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Comments
Blown past falling sands…
If it wasn't so easy to get a leggo full gear set it wouldn't be as much of an issue. Since most people would have average rare-heroic.
Blown past falling sands…
This isn't a temporary world, it is persistent. The things you do along the way inform how successful you are and how successful you will be. Actions you make on launch day can and will influence the things you do a year later.
Getting good gear is a major part of this. Put another way, getting good gear is a part of the skill of playing an MMORPG. A good player will have better gear than a bad player.
To say gear should not outweight skill is nonsensical, as gear is a demonstration of skill - your skill at the game as a whole.
People with shit gear are simply demonstrating to everyone that they are not very good at the game as a whole - and are whining about it.
DO Not want a grind to win game, We have first person shooters for that.
Right, so, the game is asking you to camp/farm to get better gear.
The people that are better at doing that are better at doing what the game is asking of them; or put another way, they are better at the game.
In the context of a game, is there a better way of defining player skill than the ability of a given player to do what the game is asking of them? I can not think of a better definition.
Playing a character skillfully during PvP should be rewarded, and that reward comes in being able to kill similarly geared players that are playing less skillfully. Being skilled at 20% of the game should not compensate for ignoring the other 80% - which is what your argument here basically boils down to.
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This is a persistent world game, people will always be getting better gear, and that is a massive part of what the game is about. We farm coin and run crates and such to get coin to (primarily) get better gear. We siege nodes to reduce those players access to gear (primarily).
Everything you do in the game is in service of getting better gear, so that you can kill rivals in PvP to disrupt their economic activity, which is also primarily about getting better gear.
That gear needs to matter at least somewhat, as if it doesn't, there is no point trying to get better gear, meaning the entire economic aspect of the game has not point, and since the PvP aspect of the game is to disrupt the economic activity of rivals, it means that aspect also has no point.
This is the true problem
If they did this, then gearing and the economy becomes pointless.
Each upgrade needs to provide a small benefit. When you have enough upgrades over an opponent, it does get to the point where it is one sided.
The resolution is not to complain, but rather for that player that claims to be better skilled to go out and get better gear.
Honestly, PvP players are such whiners. Complaining that they are so good at the game that they should be excused from doing the ground work...
If you don't have the gear, you aren't good at the game. Period. You may be good at one aspect of the game (PvP, or so the claim goes), but you are not good at the game as a whole, and thus should lose.
Having gear makes you a good farmer, not a skilled PVP player,,,, A player taking time to learn his/her toon outside of crafting and farming mobs should be rewarded for such. Sitting in a group with a good tank and healers as dps, and just mindless button grinding, or farming mats, does make you "skillful". It makes you a grinder.
Your outlook is broken, grinding does not make make you "good". Many PVPers disagree with me, because they want the EASY i win button. Grind Mobs, crafting, get gear =win. Playing your toon right needs to be part of the picture. If not, than just give each class 3 buttons.
Why should grinding mobs, and static nodes, or nodes when not static give you a I win button over a skillful player both should have = playing ground IMO and be important in the over succuss rate of a PVP fight.
Main issue is people want to claim they are good at PVP because they PVE'd. This is broke, you should be good at PVP, because you spent time PVP or in a pvp environment and learned your toon. It is a PVX game not a PVE game.,, Or supposed to be PVX. Put all high end nods spawns in PVP zones only, earn it imo. People can still get other items via pve grinding. Or make PVP gear, with mats that only drop in pvp zones or via pvp.
You are not talking about someone that has one or two pieces of gear better here, you are talking about someone that has every slot several tiers of gear better - with each tier in each slot being it's own small little "edge".
That is a lot of "edges" happening right there. They add up.
In a persistent world game like this, if you want to be competitive, you have to keep your gear on par with those you wish to fight. It is unlikely that players will ever hit a gear cap in the live game (the game dies if that happens), so everyone will always be constantly looking for gear upgrades to give them another one of those "edges". You need to keep up with that, otherwise that mountain of edges will just get larger and larger.
pvx game , gear doesn't have to be end game. The PVP and rewards from it could be......
Dark Ages of Camelot , 20 years + , the free shard is pretty cool. Is a good example of end game pvp in a pvx game
Oh, no, gear does need to be the end game.
People will stop playing the moment they see no viable progression path. This is just what happens, what has always happened, and what will continue to happen.
Sure, there are a handful of exceptions to this - such as free versions of 20 year old games - but that doesnt help Intrepid run an MMORPG today that needs 50k players per server in order to meet their 10k concurrent target across multiple servers.
Edit to add; in this context, "gear" is any form of progression. It could be a title that offers a stat boost, it could be access to a higher tier of consumable, what ever. Players will always want an avenue of progression, and developers will always give them one - which results in players further back in that progression simply being trivial regardless of skill.
Again, the solution to it is for people that want to be competitive to maintain their gear. Stop trying to find work arounds that you think could work but never will, and instead spend thst time getting better gear.
No reason why player skill level should not hold as much weight as gear.
That's like saying if you don't PvP you have no right to interact with the world. While I agree there needs to be some risk to have PvP happen it doesn't all need to exist in this eternal battleground you seem to envision. There should be the possibility for someone to work and obtain the same gear maybe in a different difficult way.
Also as far as I know having a pure PvP gear section rarely works out. You still will get people complaining that they want it even though they never PvP.
I'm not sure how you are not getting this - it is super simple.
Imagine there are 10 tiers of gear, and you have tier one gear.
Someone that comes along in tier 2 gear should have a slight advantage over you, but nothing that can't be overcome. Someone that comes along in tier 3 gear should have that same slight advantage over that player in tier 2 gear. THen a tier 4 person would have that same advantage again over the tier 3 geared person. This goes all the way up to tier 10.
Now, if you go up against that player in tier 10 gear while you are in tier 1 gear, that is 10 "slight advantages" stacked against you - not one.
No, you should not win that - you should go out and get better gear.
There will be more than 10 tiers of gear at the level cap once the game is released.
You can keep complaining and saying that isn't how you want it, I am simply telling you that this is how it *will* be.
As an aside, you've not provided any reason to assume people beating you are not both geared AND skilled. These are things that often actually do go hand in hand (people that spend a lot of time in a game tend to be good at that game). Further, people love to blame gear when they lose in PvP to someone better geared than they are, as opposed to blaming themselves for not being better, or not getting better gear.
But I'm sure that all the gearfappers would riot if we had that kind of tight scaling
players Has been that way since 2.0 .The devs want it to be between 10 and 30 seconds.
Needs fixed so we can get better numbers in testing, and balance group PVP.
Fastest way to fix this is to balance gear and let player skill hold as much weight.
Killing people in under 5 secs is no fun. 8 geared guys killing 20 medium level gear guys of = skill, because of gear level is no fun. The fact is TTK has killed the population in more than 1 testing phase already due to gear balance issues. It will kill the game when live the same way if not addressed, History is repeating itself.
I don't know about 1 point in scaling, but maybe a tighter scaling would help. But at some point there needs to be value in going from t1 to t2 and not just skipping t2,3,4,5, and going straight to the top tier. I don't know the math behind the combat so it's all speculation. I do agree with @Noaani, it's 10 slight advantages from t1 to t10, that should be very impactful. If not why even climb that ladder?
On the broader discussion:
ttk between equal players should be around 10 to 15 seconds. Maybe less maybe more, if it's two rogues, might be 3 or 5, if its a rogue vs mage, maybe less. If it's two clerics it might be 2 days. The game is aiming to have a rock, paper, scissors dynamic for combat. So not all ttks will the same. Throw different armor types in there and other things it complicates things.
What I don't like about this is gear tradable. So you can be a brand new player, jump into a a large group, level to max in 2 days, get all your gear handed to you as you level, take the handme downs from people already climbing the gear ladder. And you've effectively skipped 50% of the game. Compare this to games with soul binding features the player has to climb that ladder on their own. But even with binding, gear is still crafted but it'll at least take more effort to gear out and can't just be handed over from the previous user.
First problem is solved if they actually fix the leveling curve. Average player with what Steven has said is probably about 2 months. it was about 250 hours total to level 50. I think the later half should actually slow down even more but thats a different issue.
As for the handme down trading a lot of that is solved if we actually had some gear degradation in the game. Right now you can get hand me down gear very easily because nothing breaks down over time. There should always be a market for such gear but it is very much flooded right now.
Also, afaik WoW, with it's BoP, had dungeon walkthroughs, where newbies would be ran through dungeons by overgeared dudes and at the end the newbie would simply get all the items. Same shit, different angle.
People will always find a way to do this. i'd much prefer a proper economy and trade, rather than bullshit BoP mechanics.
Also, afaik WoW, with it's BoP, had dungeon walkthroughs, where newbies would be ran through dungeons by overgeared dudes and at the end the newbie would simply get all the items. Same shit, different angle.
This is true, but that's easily fixed, several options. All kind of pointless to go over because Ashes is going to be crafted gear anyways. So instead of having to be ran through a dungeon to get gear like WoW style, you're just handed it by your guild, a simpler quicker path to power.
But lets add on a little more to the BOE element, because since the gear is crafted it'll need to be traded anyways. Lets make BOE items still tradable after you equip it, but no one else can equip it. But they can break it down. So for example you get a sword from your guilds weaponsmith. You're done using it and you can give it back to him to get some materials back. Another example would be looting a corrupted players gear, you'll get his gear and since it's BOE you can't equip it (or maybe it loses it bind because they're corrupted) so you can pass those to your crafters and have them break it down. I think the level of corruption could determine if items get unbound or not. Just a few thoughts.
Also as @lamina5432 said, without gear degrading or maybe even out right breaking, we will see gear saturation only a few months in. The amount needed to level artisan is insane, and people will be pushing out tons of crafts to level that up. I don't know the number of gloves you need to make to get journeyman tailor, but it's probably a lot, probably more than your guild can wear. So those will go on the market, then other tailors will put theirs on the market and so on. As people level their gloves will be put on the market or passed down.
Gear can only be 'deleted' 3 ways. A player discards it, a player dismantles it, or a player loses it to the void on death if corrupted. With option 3 hardly happening, gear will stick around for a while. Dismantling might remove a good bit of gear from the world as crafters burn through nitting socks like a grandma before christmas. But dismantling will need to be more valued for that player than the market place. And once those players grind through all crafting levels they'll hardly be breaking down gear, it'd only be for a chance at a recipe (if that feature makes it in, or is in). So the natural end state of this system is gear saturation.
Effectively there is none. Obviously the latter case will be more frequent because there's more guilds and players in them, but the overall situation is the same - a player gets gear as they lvl.
Hell, the people that are begging for more gear drops are pretty much asking for the same thing. Except in their case the economy would be overwhelmed with items even more than it'll be with crafting.
We simply disagree here exactly because if I have a friend coming into the game later on - I want to help him with gear. And it's easier to just give him my old gear, instead of recrafting it all from scratch. This also creates less gear in the economy.
You're forgetting OE fails. OE is pretty much non-existent right now, so items are not disappearing. I've disappeared hundreds of items in L2 through my OE attempts. And I did this across all grades as well, because alts or newbies could always benefit from a well-OEd item.
So with a properly designed OE system, we'd shoot several birds with one stone: a money sink, an item sink, a material sink, an endgame time sink - all while supporting natural catchup mechanics for latecomers and alt support for people that wanna try out a different adventure/artisan class.
Gear upgrades need to feel like they are worth it.
A gear "upgrade" that doesn't feel worth it functions the same as no gear upgrade in terms of players wanting to spend time on it.
The problem with your notion of starting at 100 power and adding 2 per tier is that this eventually becomes pointless. If we are talking about gearing from the start of the game, there will be hundreds of tiers by the time you get to the level cap. While the difference between 100 and 102 might be small but noticeable, the difference between 462 and 464 is not noticeable at all, and is simply not worth the effort to get.
TTK is a different issue entirely.
If your issue is with TTK, then have an issue with TTK, not gearing.